No NK Kim needed to nuke USA, they DIY many times!

[我戳你个妈]

I got here a collection (not full, that will be even more cases) of American nuke bombed themselves at homeland in history.

http://www.mercurynews.com/2013/09/...ed-wrench-socket-almost-incinerated-arkansas/

Book review: How a dropped wrench socket almost incinerated Arkansas

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By Bloomberg News |
September 19, 2013 at 7:35 am
Today the world’s attention is focused on Damascus, Syria, and its chemical weapons. Thirty- three years ago events in Damascus, Ark. — also home to weapons of mass destruction — mesmerized the globe.

For almost nine hours starting on Sept. 18, 1980, brave airmen sought to contain the damage precipitated by a dropped wrench socket that hit a Titan II missile — which was tipped with a W-53 thermonuclear warhead — in its silo. The socket pierced the missile’s skin, causing fuel and oxidizer leaks.

The ensuing explosion destroyed the silo, propelling missile parts and warhead into abbreviated flight. One airman died from internal wounds while 21 personnel were injured. The W-53 warhead ended up on a nearby roadside — passed by motorists but fortunately never detonated. Close, but no mushroom cloud.

This freakish event is at the core of Eric Schlosser’s new book, “Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident and the Illusion of Safety.” “The United States has narrowly avoided a long series of nuclear disasters,” he writes.

The book makes clear that the U.S. has generally been good at handling its atomic weapons but has also had a lot of luck. He reveals declassified studies that disclose hundreds of mishaps between 1950 and ’67 and beyond. They include a B-61 hydrogen bomb accidentally dropped 7 feet from a parked B-52 bomber at Carswell Air Force Base in Texas, when a crewman pulled a handle too hard and a Mark 6 atomic bomb landing in a Mars Bluff, S.C., backyard, creating a 35-foot-deep crater and blowing out nearby windows and doors.

The 1980 Damascus incident unfolded against this background. The scary thing is that the Titan II explosion “was a normal accident, set in motion by a trivial event,” in this case a dropped socket, Schlosser says.

The book alternates between sections describing the accident with sections on the history of nuclear weapons in the U.S. Schlosser’s excellent eye for detail, which he displayed in his first book, “Fast Food Nation,” is also in evidence here.

He walks the reader — albeit sometimes in dense prose filed with PTS teams, RFHCO outfits, SRAM missiles and SIOP plans — through the post-World War II rivalries between civilian agencies and military services for control of the weapons. There were tensions between civilian technicians and scientists who pushed for safer devices and the military, who believed that safety often came at the expense of reliability.

I need to point out one historical misstep. In an abbreviated discussion of why the atomic bombs were dropped on Japan, Schlosser quotes a memo former President Herbert Hoover wrote to President Harry S. Truman that said an invasion could cost between “500,000 and 1 million American lives.”


But Schlosser doesn’t mention that War Secretary Henry Stimson asked a general to analyze Hoover’s memo, and was told that the estimate “was entirely too high.”

That incomplete reference aside, Schlosser takes Baby Boomers of the “duck and cover” era down a Megaton Memory Lane while providing a vivid primer for the Twitter generation on a world where nuclear weapons were a fact of life to deter a larger-than-life Soviet Union depicted as bent on world domination.

Some of the gems from “Command and Control”:

The Air Force Strategic Air Command public-relations machine allowed former bomber pilot Colonel Jimmy Stewart to film the 1955 “Strategic Air Command” on actual SAC bases after he met with cigar-chomping legend General Curtis LeMay.

Rhinelander, Wis., “became one of SAC’s favorite targets and it was secretly radar bombed hundreds of times thanks to the snow-covered terrain resembling that of the Soviet Union.”

The U.S. military at one point possessed 25 different types of nuclear weapons — ranging from missiles and warheads to the one-kiloton Mark 54 Special Atomic Demolition Munition “backpack bomb.”

As many as 17 states besides Arkansas had underground launch complexes — including Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Texas, South Dakota and Montana.

In a book devoted to scaring the hell out of the reader with tales of “accidents, miscalculations and mistakes,” Schlosser ends his epic pop history on a balanced note:

“One crucial fact must be kept in mind: none of the roughly 70,000 nuclear weapons built by the U.S. since 1945 has ever detonated inadvertently or without proper authorization” — a “remarkable achievement.”

Still, “thousands of missiles are hidden away, literally out of sight, topped with warheads and ready to go” — and “every one of them is an accident waiting to happen.”

“Command and Control” is published by Penguin Press, 632 pages, $36.

 

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http://www.npr.org/2016/09/15/49379...-control-a-nuclear-explosion-narrowly-avoided

In Chilling Documentary 'Command And Control,' A Nuclear Explosion Narrowly Avoided

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September 15, 20165:00 PM ET
Mark Jenkins

A 1980 accident at a Titan II missile solo outside Little Rock, Arkansas is the focus of the documentary Command and Control.

PBS/American Experience
When a nuclear bomb is in danger of accidental detonation, established procedures are carefully followed, and cooperation takes precedence over assigning blame. Or so the hopeful viewer might think before seeing Command and Control, a PBS American Experience documentary now in limited theatrical release before its broadcast debut.

The movie, developed by director Robert Kenner from Eric Schlosser's book of the same name, reveals how a warhead atop a Titan II missile risked explosion in 1980 at a Strategic Air Command (SAC) silo near Damascus, Arkansas. Workers — one of whom was killed — scrambled to prevent disaster. But the force that prevented a wider catastrophe was sheer luck.

This is not an unknown story; the fatal accident was reported at the time, though with fewer details than this film marshals. It's also not the worst Titan II calamity, at least in terms of human loss. In 1965, 53 construction workers died when hydraulic fluid ignited at another Arkansas silo.

What gives Command and Control its urgency are both its wealth of information and the implications of its story. The Titan IIs are gone — even in 1980 they were generally considered obsolete — but the U.S. nuclear-weapons program continues. Estimates of the number of near-misses (the military calls them "broken arrows") range from 32 to more than 1,000, the movie reports.

Building on Schlosser's reporting, Kenner mixes archival footage and reconstructions to achieve a minute-by-minute immediacy. He interrupts the tense chronology, not always effectively, with accounts of other nuke-bomb flubs as well as recent interviews and vintage news clips. (A Democratic Party convention was underway 46 miles away in Little Rock at the time, so a nuclear blast would likely have vaporized then-Vice-President Walter Mondale and future President Bill Clinton.)

Schlosser himself is among the talking heads. So is Harold Brown, who as Defense Secretary in 1980 knew that the Titan IIs had survived only so they could someday be traded away in arms-control negotiations. (They were deactivated in 1987.) But the most interesting commentary comes from members of the Propellant Transfer Team, notably Dave Powell, who dropped the fateful eight-pound socket from a socket wrench, which opened a hole in the missile's fuel tank.

Not on screen is anyone who explains why a nuclear warhead capable of killing 10 million people was placed atop a missile that could potentially be set afire by a dropped socket.

Kenner has demonstrated his skepticism of self-serving bureaucracies with such previous documentaries as Food, Inc. — co-produced and partly narrated by Schlosser — and Merchants of Doubt. He's clearly sympathetic to the Titan II crew members, who were dedicated both to their jobs and the larger mission. ("I would kill 10 million people, and never hesitate," says one.)

For their extremely hazardous work, which included potential conflagration and possible asphyxiation, the reward was to be scapegoated. "To err is human. To forgive is not SAC policy," explains one mid-level Air Force officer who served at Damascus.

It would be reassuring if the nuclear-weapon experts interviewed in the film claimed that procedures today are much better, and the chances of a similar mishap are significantly reduced.

No such assurances are offered.

 

[我戳你个妈]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/20/usaf-atomic-bomb-north-carolina-1961


US nearly detonated atomic bomb over North Carolina – secret document
Exclusive: Journalist uses Freedom of Information Act to disclose 1961 accident in which one switch averted catastrophe

The bomb that nearly exploded over North Carolina was 260 times more powerful than the device which devasted Hiroshima in 1945. Photo: Three Lions/Getty Images

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This article is 4 years old

Ed Pilkington in New York


@edpilkington

Friday 20 September 2013 17.03 BST First published on Friday 20 September 2013 17.03 BST

A secret document, published in declassified form for the first time by the Guardian today, reveals that the US Air Force came dramatically close to detonating an atom bomb over North Carolina that would have been 260 times more powerful than the device that devastated Hiroshima.

The document, obtained by the investigative journalist Eric Schlosser under the Freedom of Information Act, gives the first conclusive evidence that the US was narrowly spared a disaster of monumental proportions when two Mark 39 hydrogen bombs were accidentally dropped over Goldsboro, North Carolina on 23 January 1961. The bombs fell to earth after a B-52 bomber broke up in mid-air, and one of the devices behaved precisely as a nuclear weapon was designed to behave in warfare: its parachute opened, its trigger mechanisms engaged, and only one low-voltage switch prevented untold carnage.

Each bomb carried a payload of 4 megatons – the equivalent of 4 million tons of TNT explosive. Had the device detonated, lethal fallout could have been deposited over Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and as far north as New York city – putting millions of lives at risk.

Though there has been persistent speculation about how narrow the Goldsboro escape was, the US government has repeatedly publicly denied that its nuclear arsenal has ever put Americans' lives in jeopardy through safety flaws. But in the newly-published document, a senior engineer in the Sandia national laboratories responsible for the mechanical safety of nuclear weapons concludes that "one simple, dynamo-technology, low voltage switch stood between the United States and a major catastrophe".

Writing eight years after the accident, Parker F Jones found that the bombs that dropped over North Carolina, just three days after John F Kennedy made his inaugural address as president, were inadequate in their safety controls and that the final switch that prevented disaster could easily have been shorted by an electrical jolt, leading to a nuclear burst. "It would have been bad news – in spades," he wrote.

Jones dryly entitled his secret report "Goldsboro Revisited or: How I learned to Mistrust the H-Bomb" – a quip on Stanley Kubrick's 1964 satirical film about nuclear holocaust, Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

Slim Pickens in a scene from Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Photograph: The Ronald Grant Archive
The accident happened when a B-52 bomber got into trouble, having embarked from Seymour Johnson Air Force base in Goldsboro for a routine flight along the East Coast. As it went into a tailspin, the hydrogen bombs it was carrying became separated. One fell into a field near Faro, North Carolina, its parachute draped in the branches of a tree; the other plummeted into a meadow off Big Daddy's Road.

Jones found that of the four safety mechanisms in the Faro bomb, designed to prevent unintended detonation, three failed to operate properly. When the bomb hit the ground, a firing signal was sent to the nuclear core of the device, and it was only that final, highly vulnerable switch that averted calamity. "The MK 39 Mod 2 bomb did not possess adequate safety for the airborne alert role in the B-52," Jones concludes.

The document was uncovered by Schlosser as part of his research into his new book on the nuclear arms race, Command and Control. Using freedom of information, he discovered that at least 700 "significant" accidents and incidents involving 1,250 nuclear weapons were recorded between 1950 and 1968 alone.

"The US government has consistently tried to withhold information from the American people in order to prevent questions being asked about our nuclear weapons policy," he said. "We were told there was no possibility of these weapons accidentally detonating, yet here's one that very nearly did."

 

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https://www.theverge.com/2017/1/10/...tan-2-damascus-arkansas-nuclear-accident-1980

Human error in a nuclear facility nearly destroyed Arkansas
16 comments
The new documentary, Command and Control, digs into the forgotten near-miss and premieres January 10th on PBS
by Rachel Becker@RA_Becks Jan 10, 2017, 8:45pm EST

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A Titan II missile
Command and Control
Here in the US, we like to think that our nuclear weapons exist to prevent our enemies from detonating a nuclear explosion on US soil — that is, when we think about them at all. The thing is, nuclear weapons are just machines. And like all machines, sometimes they break, and sometimes, there’s user error. When the system that controls these civilization-ending weapons isn’t prepared for the inevitable technological and human screw ups, then we’re in real trouble.

“For me, the scariest thing is that this is just one of many.”
Because the consequences for a mistake are enormous. We’re reminded of that by Robert Kenner, the producer and director of Command and Control, a spectacularly gripping documentary premiering tonight at 9PM ET on the PBS series American Experience (cord-cutters can also watch it online at pbs.org and purchase it on iTunes). The film documents a series of events that almost led to a catastrophic nuclear accident in Damascus, Arkansas that would have spread radiation along the Eastern Seaboard. And it places this single accident into an alarmingly vast landscape of close-calls involving our aging nuclear infrastructure.

“For me the scariest statement in the film is [former Secretary of Defense] Harold Brown saying accidents are not unusual in the defense department, they happen every day,” Kenner told The Verge. “There are numbers and numbers of these accidents. For me, the scariest thing is that this is just one of many. But, this one had real heroes in it, and it was pretty good to see how they helped try to keep us safe, and risked their lives in doing so.”

Kenner’s documentary about human error and human bravery is based on the nonfiction book also called Command and Control by investigative journalist Eric Schlosser. The film starts in September 1980, when a 21-year-old missile technician named Dave Powell dropped the socket from a socket-wrench. Dropping a socket isn’t that unusual, but what followed was.

“There were many heroes that night.”
Powell was working on a Titan II missile fitted with a thermonuclear warhead, tucked away underground in Damascus, Arkansas. When the socket fell, it plunged 70 feet to pierce the side of the Titan II missile. The puncture released pressurized rocket fuel and set off a chaotic series of events and decisions that highlighted a chain of command ill-prepared to deal with disaster. One young man died as a result.

The film is driven by a series of moving interviews with the Air Force crew members who were on the base, as well as with the scientists, policy makers, and military higher-ups connected with the accident. Many, it’s clear, have still not recovered from that September night in 1980.

I spoke with Kenner, who previously directed the Emmy-winning documentary Food, Inc., about his experience making the film:

How did this film develop from the book?

Eric wrote a very impressive book bringing our attention to a subject that we don’t think about much. But I wasn’t sure how to change that into a film.

Command and Control
Eric and I have collaborated in the past and wanted to collaborate again, but I wasn’t sure how to do it, and it wasn’t until we got access to the last remaining Titan II missile silo [in Arizona, outside of Tucson] that it became a possibility. Both the Air Force and the people who run the silo at first agreed to let us in and then gradually became more and more and more enthusiastic about having us. [They] allowed us to put the drone in the silo, which is about four, four-and-a-half feet between the missile and the walls.

They basically opened everything up to us and allowed us to in effect create images where there were no images that night. Obviously, there were Air Force training films leading up to that night. There was footage from the exterior [from that night] that we used, and we tried to match it with the footage that we shot inside. And the fact is, the silo we shot in was absolutely identical to the silo in Damascus, because I think there were 54 silos and they were all absolutely identical so if you took a missileer from one, and put him in another, there would be no confusion whatsoever.

Was there a missile inside the silo when you were filming with the drone?

Yeah, there was a missile, there was not a warhead. And the missile did not have liquid fuel in it. Actually, the warhead had a hole taken out of the exterior of the warhead just so that the Russians could come and verify that there was nothing in it every year.

I'm surprised that the Air Force was so on board with this given that the film doesn't paint them in the best light.

This night was not the Air Force’s best night, to put it mildly. A lot of mistakes were made, but there were many heroes that night from the men that worked there. Unfortunately, many of them were reprimanded after putting their lives on the line. Many of them have since been honored since the film was shown. The fact of the matter is, these weapons are terrifying.

“We’ve built this incredible technology, but it’s still dependent on us.”
Many in the Air Force are the only ones thinking about them. I don't think it makes them happy to know that we as a country are not thinking about these incredibly dangerous weapons that are there to make us safer from our enemies, but also pose a threat to ourselves — as this film shows. And this is one of many, many, many incidences that have happened and that continue to happen to this day. So I think on some levels the Air Force doesn't want to be the only ones thinking about it. Today we’re talking about creating a new arms race but I think we have to know that there's as much of a danger for us as there is for anyone we might be thinking of protecting ourselves from.

I mean the timing of this release is pretty spot on. Did you predict that nuclear weapons would be on everybody's minds quite as much as they are?

What I did know is that there’s a big decision to be made whether we’re going to modernize the system or not. And I think that it’s important that more than a few people are part of this conversation. We're about to spend billions and billions of dollars, or not spend billions and billions of dollars, and I think it should be something that the American public is conscious of — aware of the dangers, and aware of the benefits. We should know what's happening — and this shouldn't be a decision that's made by very few people, because it’s far too important.

 

[我戳你个妈]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_Damascus_Titan_missile_explosion

1. 1980 Damascus Titan missile explosion
   From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
   
   
   
   
   Damascus
   
   Location in the United States
   
   
   
   
   374-7
   
   Location in Arkansas
   The Damascus Titan missile explosion was an incident in the United States in 1980 in rural Arkansas. Liquid fuel in a U.S. Air Force LGM-25C Titan II intercontinental ballistic missile exploded at a missile launch facility on September 19, 1980. It occurred at Launch Complex 374-7 in Van Buren County farmland just north of Damascus, approximately fifty miles (80 km) north of Little Rock.[1][2]
   
   The Strategic Air Command facility of Little Rock Air Force Base was one of eighteen silos in the command of the 308th Strategic Missile Wing (308th SMW), specifically one of the nine silos within its 374th Strategic Missile Squadron (374th SMS), at the time of the explosion.
   
   Contents
   • 1 Incident
   • 2 Popular culture
   • 3 See also
   • 4 References
   Incident
   Around 6:30 p.m. CDT on Thursday, September 18, 1980, two airmen from a propellant transfer system (PTS) team were checking the pressure on the oxidizer tank on a USAF Titan-II missile at Little Rock AFB's Launch Complex 374-7. Due to time constraints when going into the silo, a previously acceptable ratchet and socket (3 ft (0.9 m), 25 lb (11 kg)) was taken instead of the newly mandated torque wrench. The 8 lb (3.6 kg) socket was accidentally dropped approximately 80 feet (24 m) before hitting a thrust mount and piercing the skin on the missile's first-stage fuel tank, causing it to leak a cloud of its aerozine 50 fuel.
   
   
   
   Strategic Missile (SM) sites of 373rd & 374th SMSquadrons, reporting to 308th SMWing
   Aerozine 50 is hypergolic with the Titan II's oxidizer, nitrogen tetroxide; i.e., they spontaneously ignite on contact with each other. The nitrogen tetroxide is kept in a second tank in the rocket's first-stage, directly above the fuel tank and below the second-stage and its 9-megaton W53 nuclear warhead.
   
   Eventually, the missile combat crew and the PTS team evacuated the launch control center, while military and civilian response teams arrived to tackle the hazardous situation. There was concern for a possible collapse of the now empty first-stage fuel tank, which could cause the rest of the missile to fall and rupture, allowing the oxidizer to contact the fuel already in the silo.
   
   
   
   Titan ICBM in launch silo
   Early in the morning (Friday, September 19), a two-man PTS investigation team entered the silo. Because their vapor detectors indicated an explosive atmosphere, the two were ordered to evacuate. The team was then ordered to reenter the silo to turn on an exhaust fan. Senior Airman David Livingston reentered the silo to carry out the order and shortly thereafter, at about 3:00 a.m., the hypergolic fuel exploded. The initial explosion catapulted the 740-ton silo door away from the silo and ejected the second stage and warhead. Once clear of the silo, the second stage exploded. The W53 warhead landed about 100 feet (30 m) from the launch complex's entry gate; its safety features operated correctly and prevented any loss of radioactive material.
   
   Senior Airman David Livingston (posthumously promoted to Sergeant), was seriously injured and later died at the hospital, while 21 others in the immediate vicinity of the blast were seriously injured.[3][4] The entire launch complex was destroyed.[3]
   
   At daybreak, the Air Force retrieved the warhead and took it to Little Rock AFB. During the recovery, the 308th Missile Wing's commander, Col. John Moser, received strong support from other military units as well as federal, state, and local officials.[5][6]
   
   The former launch complex was decommissioned and disassembled, and now stands on private land.[7] The site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2000.
   
   Popular culture
   A 1988 television movie, Disaster at Silo 7, is based on this event.[8]
   
   In September 2013, Eric Schlosser published Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety.[9] It focused on the explosion, as well as other Broken Arrow incidents during the Cold War.[10][11]
   
   A documentary film titled Command and Control from director Robert Kenner, based on the book by Eric Schlosser, was released January 10, 2017. The film was broadcast by PBS as part of its American Experience series. [12]
   

 

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https://arstechnica.com/information...ke-mishap-overlooked-in-nuclear-force-review/

Biz & IT —
Air Force 2014 “bent spear” nuke mishap overlooked in nuclear force review
Minuteman III had $1.8 million in damage, but at least it didn't blow up.
Sean Gallagher - Jan 25, 2016 8:15 pm UTC

Don't drop a wrench, man: airmen perform maintenance on a Minuteman III missile.
US Air Force


You'll be relieved to know that the public was never put in danger by a nuclear weapons incident that caused $1.8 million (£1.3 million) in damages to a Minuteman III missile in Colorado. But the accident, which happened in May of 2014, initially went unreported by the US Air Force even as a team of experts reviewed the service's nuclear forces in the wake of a testing scandal and security failures.

The Associated Press received what it called "the first substantive description of the accident" last Friday following more than a year of requests to the Air Force.

Details of the incident have been kept secret by the Air Force because of their sensitive nature, but we now know the situation rendered an intercontinental ballistic missile inoperable. Three airmen were trying to troubleshoot the missile after it failed a diagnostic test and had become "non-operational." Ultimately, the accident would likely have been categorized as a "Bent Spear" event, the code used by the military for damaged weapons (as opposed to "Broken Arrow," the code for an accidental nuclear detonation or other weapons incident in peacetime).

According to the Air Force, the missile was partially damaged in this troubleshooting process because the maintenance chief "did not correctly adhere to technical guidance" and "lacked the necessary proficiency level" to understand that what was being done to find the problem could cause greater damage to the missile.

The 2014 independent review of the Air Force's "nuclear enterprise" found widespread morale problems and deteriorating hardware. At the time, then-Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel said the report found that "a consistent lack of investment and support for our nuclear forces over far too many years has left us with too little margin to cope with mounting stresses. The reviews found evidence of systematic problems that if not addressed could undermine the safety, security, and effectiveness of the elements of the force in the future."

While expensive, the May 2014 incident at the "Juliet-07" silo—nine miles outside Peetz, Colorado—is hardly the most serious incident to have occurred within the Air Force's nuclear forces. The service went through a wave of missile safety improvements in the 1980s after the "Damascus Incident," when a technician dropped a socket wrench and triggered the explosion of a Titan II ICBM in Damascus, Arkansas. The wrench struck the missile as it fell and pierced the skin of its booster, causing fuel and oxidizer leaks. The resulting explosion killed one airman, injured 21 others, and ejected the W-53 nuclear warhead from the silo. The warhead landed next to a nearby road. The Titan II missiles were phased out in the 1980s as the LGM-118 "Peacekeeper" missile was being introduced.

60 Minutes shocked to find 8-inch floppies drive nuclear deterrent
But since the 1980s, there's been little in the way of technology updates for the US ballistic missile force. The Minuteman III missile damaged in the newly uncovered incident entered service in the 1970s. While the 450 Minuteman III missiles have had significant upgrades over the past three decades (including a new guidance system in 1993), most of the billions spent on them has been to refurbish their existing technology. The network linking together the command bunkers for the Minuteman III fleet uses software that is stored on 8-inch floppy disks.

Fortunately, there have been no explosive accidents with nuclear weapons since 1958, when a B-52 accidentally released an unarmed nuclear bomb over South Carolina. Luckily, in that event, the fissile core of the bomb was not installed. However, the bomb's conventional explosive trigger did go off, causing an explosion that damaged a nearby house when it struck the ground and created a crater 70 feet wide and 35 feet deep. Given the number of other accidentally dropped or explosively launched nuclear warheads over the past 60 years, it's a testament to the engineering behind US nuclear warhead design that there hasn't been an accidental atomic explosion. You have to look on the bright side of these things.

Sean Gallagher Sean is Ars Technica's IT Editor. A former Navy officer, systems administrator, and network systems integrator with 20 years of IT journalism experience, he lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland.

 

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/roadt...opped-a-nuke-on-south-carolina_b_6041794.html

That One Time America Accidentally Dropped a Nuke on South Carolina
10/24/2014 10:40 am ET Updated Dec 24, 2014
In the history of terrible mistakes, accidentally dropping a nuclear bomb on your own country has to rank pretty damn high. That's exactly what happened when a really, really stupid accident resulted in America tossing an atom bomb on rural South Carolina.

io9
On March 11, 1958, an Air Force B-47 Stratojet was making its way to the United Kingdom from the Hunter Air Force Base in Savannah, Georgia. It was sent out with the intention of helping out in Operation Snow Flurry, but it never made it.

As the plane was cruising over South Carolina, the pilots noticed that a fault light in the cockpit was indicating a problem with the locking pin on the bomb harnesses in the cargo bay. You see, back then, the plane was required to carry nuclear weapons at all times just in case a war broke out with the Soviet Union. The nuclear bomb in question was as 26-kiloton Mark 6, even more powerful than the Fat Man bomb dropped on Nagasaki. Great idea, right?

Flickr
Air Force Captain Bruce Kulka was acting as the navigator on the flight and decided to go back and check out the problem. While pulling himself up from the plane floor, he reached around the bomb to steady himself, but ended up grabbing the the bomb's emergency release pin instead. Whoops. Kulka could only look on in horror as the bomb dropped to the floor, pushed open the bomb bay doors, and fell 15,000 feet toward rural South Carolina.

Florence Museum
Fortunately for the entire East Coast, the bomb's fission core was stored in a separate part of the plane, meaning that it wasn't technically armed. Unfortunately for Walter Gregg, it was still loaded with about 7,600 pounds of traditional explosives. The resulting explosion leveled his house, flattened a good section of the forest, and created a mushroom cloud that could be seen for miles. When the dust had settled, the bomb had caused a 25-foot-deep crater that measured 75 feet wide, and while it had injured a number of Gregg's family members, miraculously, not a single person was killed.

While you may have never heard about the strange tale of the Carolinas' first brush with a nuke, the crater still exists just off of South Carolina Highway 76, marked by a historical plaque. Visitors can trek down the path that leads to the Mars Bluff Atomic Bomb Crater where they can see the impact site and read an informational board complete with a mock up of the bomb's size. Just make sure you ask the current property owners for permission before you head down the trail. They're generally pretty keen to show the crater off.

Forence Museum

Florence Museum
Notice how I said this was just the Carolinas' first brush with a nuclear weapon? There was an even scarier accident that happened just a bit north a few years later, and it's one that no even knew about until last year.

Thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, investigative journalist Eric Schlosser discovered that on January 23, 1961, a B-52 bomber broke up mid air, dropping two Mark 39 hydrogen bombs over Goldsboro, North Carolina. While one bomb never activated, the second one had its trigger mechanisms engage and its parachute open, two things that only happen when the bomb is intended to explode on target. In fact, only one low-voltage trigger kept it from detonating upon landing.

Scary stuff.

After that, you're probably looking for the best places to ride out the impending (accidental) nuclear apocalypse. Let me suggest checking out the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site, the The Greenbrier Nuclear Bunker, or the Satsop Nuclear Plant, all fine places to set up the perfect fallout shelter.

MORE RAD STORIES FROM ROADTRIPPERS:
Harvard discovers it owns several books bound in human skin

Hiker discovers an entire abandoned town in National Park

America's scariest hotel is haunted...by hundreds of clowns

Like stories like these? Friend me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter for more of the coolest, offbeat travel content delivered straight to your social feeds! Plus, I know some killer fart jokes.






That One Time America Accidentally Dropped a Nuke on South Carolina

 

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https://www.deseretnews.com/top/260...oyed-itself-with-its-own-nuclear-weapons.html


13 times the U.S. almost destroyed itself with its own nuclear weapons
Bethan Owen
Published: July 13, 2014 11:18 p.m.

19
Comments

Wikimedia Commons
In two days, it will be the 69th anniversary of the the first ever atomic test, conducted in the deserts of New Mexico on July 16, 1945. The bomb was found to have the same destructive force as 15,000 to 20,000 tons of TNT, according to PBS. PBS also gave an account of General Leslie Groves, who was there to witness the testing and described it as "successful beyond the most optimistic expectations of anyone."

However, the U.S.' record with nuclear weapons has not always been quite as "successful" as its first atomic test. In fact, the U.S. has had several close encounters with its own nuclear weapons that could easily have ended in disaster. Compiled here are the stories of 13 nuclear near-misses of catastrophic proportions.

January, 1961: Goldsboro, North Carolina
Wikimedia Commons
"By the slightest margin of chance, literally the failure of two wires to cross, a nuclear explosion was averted," said Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara of the two nuclear bombs accidentally dropped on Goldsboro, North Carolina.

McNamara was speaking, according to CNN, about the damaged mechanism that was the sole preventer of a nuclear explosion in Goldsboro.

The two bombs were released when the Air Force bomber that was carrying the weapons broke in half midflight. The parachute for the first bomb, pictured left, activated and prevented detonation. The parachute for the second bomb failed to open, and the bomb was armed when it hit the ground.

Had it exploded, CNN calculates that it would have killed 28,000 people and injured 26,000, emitting radiation over a 15 mile radius.

Five of the eight man crew survived the bomber crash.

October 25, 1962: Duluth, Minnesota
Wikimedia Commons
A midnight intruder at the Duluth Sector Direction Center almost led to a nuclear strike, according to the Nuclear Files website.

A guard at the compound shot at the intruder, who was in the act of climbing the fence. This shot activated the "sabotage alarm," which triggered warnings at all military bases in the area including the base at Volk Field, Wisconsin.

The Volk alarm had been wired incorrectly, and instead of a simple warning the system ordered nuclear armed F-106A interceptors to go to the alarm's point of origin — Duluth. Due to the Cuban Missile Crisis, the country was at DEFCON 3, a time when there were no practice drills. The pilots expected to be dropping their nuclear payload that night.

Immediate communication came from Duluth, informing Volk that something had been miscommunicated and a nuclear strike was not needed. The planes, which were already headed down the runway towards Minnesota, were called off by a car that raced from the Volk command center as soon as the communication from Duluth was received, stopping the planes' takeoff.

The intruder was later revealed to be a black bear.

 

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September 19, 1980: Damascus, Arkansas
Wikimedia Commons
An Air Force repairman conducting maintenance on a Titan II ICBM missile silo in 1980 almost caused a nuclear explosion, according to History.com website.

The repairman accidentally dropped a wrench into the silo, and the heavy tool punctured the fuel tank of the missile. The missile leaked fuel for over eight hours before it finally exploded, killing a service member, injuring 21 others, and destroying the compound where the silo was held.

Despite the massive blast, the nuclear warhead was recovered intact.

November 9th, 1979: Washington, D.C.
Wikimedia Commons
On the morning of Nov. 9, four American command centers including the Pentagon and the Strategic Air Command’s bunker received a message that Russia had launched a massive nuclear strike, according to Listverse.

The U.S. prepared retaliation missiles and conducted an immediate threat assessment conference. After six minutes of scanning airspace and satellite data, no Russian missiles were found, and the U.S. found no need to return fire.

The cause of the alarm was later found to be a military training tape describing a fictional Soviet attack. The tape had accidentally been loaded into the early warning computers. After the scare, a new facility was created for the sole purpose of running these training tapes in isolation from other compounds.

March 14, 1961: Yuba City, California
Wikimedia Commons
When the pressurization system of a B-42 carrying two nuclear weapons began to fail at 10,000 feet, the Air Force commander on board ordered his crew to abandon ship, according to History.com.

The commander, meanwhile, stayed on board the failing aircraft in order to steer the plane away from the densely populated areas of Yuba City, California, that the plane was directly over.

The commander bailed from the plane at 4,000 feet after steering the plane away from populated areas. The plane crashed several miles from the city and the weapons were torn from the plane, although their safety mechanisms prevented them from exploding or releasing any contamination.

 

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May 22, 1957: Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico
Wikimedia Commons
A nuclear bomb was being transported from Texas to New Mexico when it fell 1,700 feet from the bomb bay doors into a field near the city of Albuquerque. Nobody knows exactly why the bomb fell, but its traditional explosives detonated, leaving a crater 12 feet deep and 25 feet wide, according to History.com.

The city of Albuquerque was saved by a safety protocol; the nuclear explosives had been separated from the rest of the bomb for safety during transport. The nuclear capsule was later found intact, and the only casualty of the event was a cow grazing too close to the detonation site.

February 5, 1958: Savannah River, Georgia
Wikimedia Commons
During a training simulation, a B-47 that was carrying a nuclear weapon had a midair crash with an F-86. Fearing the worst, officials ordered the nuclear weapon aboard to be ejected from the plane and into the river below, according to History.com.

The conventional explosives in the bomb failed to detonate and the nuclear capsule, which had not been installed in the weapon during the training exercise, remained intact.

Despite extensive searching, the Air Force never found the bomb in the river.

November 4, 1958: Dyess Air Force Base, Texas
Wikimedia Commons
A plane carrying a nuclear warhead burst into flames during takeoff at the Dyess Air Force Base in Texas, leading to an explosion and the death of a crewman aboard the plane, according to Reporter News.

The traditional explosives went off, although the nuclear core remained intact and was recovered later at the scene.

Butterfield Elementary School was only about half a mile away from the explosion. No one at the school was harmed.

March 11, 1958: Florence, South Carolina
Wikimedia Commons
A suburban neighborhood in Florence, South Carolina was rocked by an explosion in 1958 as a thermonuclear weapon fell from a B-47E aircraft overhead, according to the Daily Mail.

The three-ton bomb was accidentally jettisoned from the aircraft soon after the plane took off when the pilot, looking for the bomb's locking pin, grabbed the emergency bomb release instead. The nuclear core of the bomb was stored elsewhere in the plane, preventing a nuclear accident.

The bomb destroyed a playhouse in the woods behind the Greggs family's house. The Greggs' two little girls Helen and Frances, along with their cousin Ella Davies, had been playing in the playhouse just minutes before the bomb fell. If they had remained in the house any longer, they would have been the first Americans killed by a nuclear weapon on U.S. soil.

 

[我戳你个妈]

October 11, 1957: Homestead Air Force Base, Florida
Wikimedia Commons
Soon after liftoff from the Homestead Air Force Base, the tire of a B-57 carrying a nuclear device exploded. The explosion crashed the plane into a field, where the aircraft burned for four hours, according to the U.S. National Security Archives website.

The traditional explosives in the bomb caused two explosions as the plane burned. The nuclear capsule and its carrying case, however, were found intact and only slightly damaged by the fire.



November 26, 1958: Chennault Air Force Base, Louisiana
Wikimedia Commons
A B-47 carrying a single nuclear weapon caught fire while on the ground at Chennault Air Force Base, according to the U.S. National Security Archives website.

The fire damaged the nuclear capsule and its protective case, causing nuclear leakage and contamination. However, this contamination was limited to the immediate area of the destroyed aircraft.

October 15, 1959: Hardinsberg, Kentucky
Wikimedia Commons
A B-52 carrying two nuclear weapons and a KC-135 meant to refuel the B-52 midair collided over Kentucky, according to the U.S. National Security Archives website. The collision caused both planes and both bombs to fall to earth.

The crash killed four crew members of both the B-52 and the KC-135. The two nuclear weapons were discovered in the crash, unarmed and only slightly damaged — not enough to cause radiation leakage.

December 8, 1964: Bunker Hill Air Force Base, Indiana
Wikimedia Commons
A series of errors including an icy runway led to a B-58 that was carrying five nuclear weapons skidding off the taxiway, according to the U.S. National Security Archives website.

The plane, about to take off from Bunker Hill (now Grissom) Air Force Base struck an electrical manhole box and caught fire. One crewman was killed, and portions of all five weapons burned. The contamination released by the damaged nuclear weapons was contained in the immediate area of the crash and immediately disposed of.

 

[我戳你个妈]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...50-years-ago-forgotten-surviving-victims.html

The day America dropped 4 nuclear bombs on Spain... but the disaster, 50 years ago, has been forgotten by all but its surviving victims

• On January 16 1966, a U.S. B-52 Stratofortress took off from Seymour Johnson Air Force base in North Carolina
• Bombers were continually flown on 24-hour missions across the Atlantic, to provide the States' nuclear capability
• It was a routine mission for the crew but then disaster struck over Palomares, Andalucia, as the aircraft refuelled
• Four hydrogen bombs plummeted to earth at horrific speeds, which would have killed millions had they exploded

By Guy Walters for the Daily Mail

Published: 00:25 BST, 18 January 2016 | Updated: 01:16 BST, 18 January 2016

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There is nothing routine about flying an aircraft loaded with four hydrogen bombs, each of which is a hundred times more powerful than the bomb which obliterated Hiroshima.

But for the seven crew members of the B-52 Stratofortress that took off from Seymour Johnson Air Force base in North Carolina almost exactly 50 years ago, on January 16, 1966, this was very much business as usual.

Their mission was part of a huge operation called Chrome Dome, which had been running for six years and was a vital part of the United States’ nuclear capability.

In order to provide the superpower with the constant ability to retaliate in the event of a Soviet atomic strike, bombers were continually flown on 24-hour missions all the way across the Atlantic to the east coast of Italy, before turning back to the States.


Ruined: Despite attempts made at the time by the Americans to clean up the mess, the crash that Monday morning 50 years ago still has ramifications today


Discovery: Crewmen on board the submarine USS Petrol lash down the U.S. Hydrogen bomb, still partially wrapped in shrouds of its parachute, after its recovery from the sea

This meant that if the President gave the order to strike the Soviet Union, the bombers could swiftly reach the targets over which they could unload their apocalyptic cargoes.

Piloting the B-52 that day was 29-year-old Charles J. Wendorf, who, despite his relative youth, had been flying the bombers for well over five years. He was a father-of-three, and that morning his wife Bette had warned him that she had a bad feeling about the flight.

Bette begged him not to go. Wendorf told her that orders were orders: he had no choice.

 

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Because of the length of the mission, the B-52 had to be refuelled in the air four times. After turning around over the Adriatic, the plane headed back to her third refuelling point, where she would link up with a huge KC-135 Stratotanker at 31,000 feet above south-eastern Spain.

Just before 10.30 am on January 17, the planes made their rendezvous. With the two aircraft flying at nearly 500 mph, the refuelling procedure was tricky, but the crews were experienced. At the time, Wendorf was taking a break and the B-52 was being flown by Major Larry G. Messinger, one of the two co-pilots.

The operation involved lining up the bomber’s receiving receptacle with a fuel boom being trailed by the KC-135. The tanker’s boom operator noticed that the B-52 was approaching a little fast.

‘Watch your enclosure,’ the operator calmly told the crew of the B-52 by way of warning. If the operator thought the situation was perilous, he would have ordered the bomber to break away, but no such order came.

‘We didn’t see anything dangerous about the situation,’ Messinger recalled. ‘But all of a sudden, all hell seemed to break loose.’


Devastating: On January 17 in 1966, two US Air Force planes collided mid-air and dropped four nuclear bombs over Palomares (pictured) on the Andalucian coast


Impact: Despite attempts made at the time by the Americans to clean up the mess, the crash that Monday morning 50 years ago still has ramifications today. Pictured, a sign put up by the Spanish government warns of the radioactive material in the area


Hell was the right word: the B-52 had overshot and the boom had missed the fuel nozzle in the top of the plane. Instead, the boom had smashed into the bomber with such force that its left wing was ripped off.

Fire quickly spread up the fuel-filled boom and ignited all 30,000 gallons of the tanker’s kerosene, causing it to plummet to the ground. Meanwhile, the bomber started to break up, and the crew did their best to get out of the plane using parachutes.

 

[我戳你个妈]

As for the hydrogen bombs, there was nothing that could be done. In less than two minutes, they would be crashing into the Earth at an enormous speed — potentially destroying much of the regions of Andalucia and Murcia.

What in the name of God are doing, Pepé? Get away from there! This could be dangerous.
Pedro de la Torre Flores' wife, Luisa
Hundreds of thousands of people could be about to die, and the nuclear fallout would have the capacity to kill millions more all over Europe — not just from radiation poisoning but from cancers for decades to come.

Half a century on, we all know that several thousand square miles of Spain were not actually destroyed by a devastating series of thermonuclear explosions. Had such a horrific disaster taken place, then the history of the past 50 years would have been very different.

Yet this is a story which has all-too-current echoes, given that just a few days ago North Korea claimed to have successfully tested its own hydrogen bomb.

That boast caused consternation around the world, and there is little doubt that if Kim Jong-un found himself at war with the West, he would love to drop such a devastating weapon on Europe.

How chilling to discover, then, that such a scenario did almost happen five decades ago. And the danger was all too real.

The nuclear payloads of the four American B28 hydrogen bombs mercifully did not detonate when they landed, even though the conventional explosives in two of the bombs did explode, showering some 500 acres around the fishing village of Palomares with three kilograms of highly radioactive plutonium-239.

Despite attempts made at the time by the Americans to clean up the mess, the crash that Monday morning 50 years ago still has ramifications today.


Hunt: Spanish workmen look at wreckage scattered over a hillside as they assist in the search for an atomic weapon missing in the crash of an American nuclear bomber in Palomares


Deadly legacy: American sailors recover one of the H bombs, still wrapped in its parachute, that fell into the sea, in April, four months after the crash

Just last October, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry agreed to finalise a deal with the Spanish Foreign Minister that calls upon the U.S. to remove and dispose of some 50,000 cubic metres of earth that remains contaminated.

 

[我戳你个妈]

This raises some awkward questions for the United States, many of which have a direct bearing on the 1,600 inhabitants of Palomares, at least half of whom are British expatriates. In particular, why have the Americans taken so long to clean up the fallout?

As soon as the crash took place, the residents of Palomares found themselves bombarded with huge scraps of flaming metal. In the words of one five-year-old girl, the sky was ‘raining fire’.

In his elementary school, teacher José Molinero told his pupils to stay inside. A piece of the bomber’s landing gear had smashed down just 80 yards away.

Others had similarly near misses, not least 83-year-old Pedro de la Torre Flores, who was standing with two of his great-nephews that day. One of the four hydrogen bombs fell right in front of them — and blew up.

It was Pedro’s lucky day, though, because the explosion was not a full-scale thermonuclear blast but the detonation of the bomb’s conventional payload. Although Pedro and his nephews were knocked over, they were not vaporised.

So why did the bomb not explode? The reason is because it had not been armed by the crew, which meant that the electrical circuits required to bring about a full explosion had not been activated. The conventional explosives in hydrogen bombs such as the B28 have to be detonated in a certain sequence in order to bring about the fission of the bomb’s uranium and plutonium, and then the subsequent fusion of the hydrogen atoms that really gives the bomb its terrifying power.

Therefore, when an unarmed nuclear bomb’s conventional payload detonates, the effect is not nuclear armageddon but that of a ‘dirty bomb’ — a conventional explosive that spreads toxic radioactive substances.

Of course, neither Pedro nor his great-nephews were to know all this science, let alone whether the bombs were even nuclear.

Soon after the bomb had landed, the father of one of Pedro’s great-nephews started trying to kick out a ring of fire that surrounded it, and even accidentally kicked the bomb.

It was at this point that his wife Luisa ran out of their house and admonished her husband in what must have been the greatest understatement of the Cold War: ‘What in the name of God are doing, Pepé? Get away from there! This could be dangerous.’

What of the remaining three bombs? Miraculously, not one of them caused any damage to people or property. The second bomb also detonated, although only half of its conventional explosives blew up. The third landed in a dried river bed without exploding, and the fourth fell six miles out to sea.

Still more fortunate, the parachutes on the bombs had failed, which meant they fell with such force that they were largely buried when they detonated, so only a relatively small amount of radioactive plutonium was blown around.

Better still, a breeze took the radioactive particles away from Palomares. No wonder that the village priest said ‘the hand of God’ was at work.

Divine intervention may have spared Palomares, but it was less merciful when dealing with the crews of the two aircraft.

The four men on board the tanker met a gruesome death, and were likely to have been burned alive before the plane eventually exploded in a huge fireball at 1,600 feet.

Those on the B-52 fared somewhat better. Four of the crew, including Captain Wendorf, managed to parachute to safety, and three were rescued from the sea. The fourth, Captain Ivens Buchanan, fell on land near Palomares, although he was still strapped to his ejector seat, and suffered severe burns and a broken shoulder.

 

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Relief: The recovered hydrogen bomb displayed on the fantail of the submarine rescue ship USS Petrel (ASR-14) after it was located by DSV Alvin at a depth of 760m


Clean up: Barrels of contaminated soil being prepared for removal from Palomares to the U.S. for processing


Nuclear: Spanish farmers and U.S. forces take on the massive job of cleaning up the remnants from the 'dirty bomb' that were scattered over the small fishing village on the Andalucian coast

The remaining few members of the crew were unable to get out of the disintegrating plane.

Within minutes of the crash, the United States Air Force cabled the Pentagon and the White House situations room with the code name denoting the loss of a nuclear warhead: Broken Arrow. While President Lyndon Johnson was kept informed, a Disaster Control Team from the U.S. base at Torrejon was rushed to Palomares, and arrived there that afternoon to hunt for the bombs.

Three bombs were located and removed within 24 hours, but the Americans would have a greater problem with the fourth, which was lying 2,500 feet below the surface of the Mediterranean.

What happened next was a farrago of errors. It took the U.S. Navy nearly three months to find the bomb, and when they finally started to haul it to the surface, the weapon was dropped and fell a further 500 ft down. Then, a submarine got tangled up in the bomb’s parachute lines and was almost lost. Finally, by the middle of April, the bomb was hoisted from the water.

 

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Threat: Kim Jong-un watches a submarine-launched ballistic missile which he claims could deliver a nuclear warhead, however experts claim the footage was faked. North Korea claims it has a weapons system capable of obliterating the entire United States with nuclear bombs


Public: President John F. Kennedy making his inauguration speech from the balcony of the White House in Washington, DC, on Jan 20 1961, Washington, DC, USA

During the recovery period, the U.S. and Spanish governments handled the understandable public anxiety in the utterly inept way at which officialdom excels. Statements ranged from straight denials that there were nuclear weapons involved, to an acknowledgement that there may have been, and finally to a reluctant, sheepish confession.

The two governments also remained tight-lipped as to whether the residents of Palomares had been affected by radiation. Certainly, urine samples at the time showed that the population had breathed in only minute amounts of plutonium particles, and it was considered that nobody required any special attention or treatment.

However, a greater problem lay with the ground over which the particles had been blown. To its credit, the United States removed nearly 5,000 barrels of radioactive soil for burial at the Atomic Energy Commission headquarters in Charleston, South Carolina, and farmers were compensated for tomato crops that had been affected.

Yet despite the American efforts to eradicate the radioactivity, many residents remain unconvinced that they are safe. According to one report, around 50 villagers are still carrying plutonium in their bodies, and there is anecdotal evidence that, after the incident, many villagers died of cancers relatively young. Unfortunately, there is now no way of confirming this, as all the medical records were suppressed and destroyed by the fascist authorities of General Franco.


Complete destruction: The explosion of the H-Bomb in the Marshall Islands of the Pacific in the autumn of 1952. The stem reached a height of 10 miles, while the cloud reached 25 miles above the Earth


Disaster: The B-52 bomber from the Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in Goldsboro, North Carolina, had been on global patrol over Europe loaded with four hydrogen bombs when it collided with a tanker in mid-air

It is therefore unsurprising that Palomares has been a bone of contention between Spain and the United States for decades.

In 2008, the Spanish nuclear authority reported that more than 12 acres of land is still contaminated, and that some half a kilo of plutonium still remains.

After much diplomatic to-ing and fro-ing, the Americans have finally decided to do the decent thing and clear up their atomic mess once and for all.

Under the deal finalised by the Secretary of State John Kerry, the United States will now have to remove the remaining soil.

This will be a huge project, taking some two years, and costing some £26 million — a true legacy of the dangers of the Cold War.However, when one considers what the cost may have been, then that figure seems very small indeed. Bette Wendorf’s dark premonition may have been right; but, back then, it was easy to have foreseen something far, far worse.

 

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NUCLEAR NEAR MISSES THROUGH THE DECADES
May 22, 1957: Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico

A cow was killed and residents of Albuquerque terrified when a B-36 aircraft transporting a nuclear bomb from Texas to New Mexico fell through the bomb bay doors from 1,700 feet and detonated, blasting a crater 12 feet deep and 25 feet across. Luckily the nuclear capsule had separated from the bomb and did not explode.

February 5, 1958: Savannah River, Georgia

A B-47 carrying a nuclear bomb collided midair with an F-86 jet during a training flight. The device was jettisoned and fell into the the river and has never been located.

January 24, 1961: Goldsboro, North Carolina

The U.S. government came dangerously close to detonating a nuclear bomb over North Carolina at the height of the Cold War – but was saved by a faulty switch. Two Mark 39 hydrogen bombs – equivalent to 260 times the strength of the Hiroshima device – fell to earth when a B—52 broke apart in mid-flight. One fell harmlessly to the ground, but another went into detonation sequence and seemed primed for detonation - a notoriously faulty switch is all that prevented nuclear fallout from falling as far north as New York City.

March 14, 1961: Yuba City, California

A crippled B-52 carrying a pair of nuclear bombs suffered a loss of pressure at 10,000 feet. The commander stayed aboard to pilot the plane away from Yuba City in California before ejecting at 4,000 feet. The plane crashed but nothing detonated and the bombs were recovered.

 

[我戳你个妈]

So is NK Kim THE ROCKET MAN or is America itself THE ROCKET MAN of their own?

 

[steffychun]

Ang Moh the best in killing themselves